In general, the quality of an image captured outdoors is degraded by a turbid medium such as atmospheric particles and trickles. In particular, the video quality of an image is influenced by weather, which influences the identification of the original color and shape of an object included in the image.
In particular, since haze-induced video quality degradation occurs throughout the image and is maintained relatively uniformly and continuously, various techniques are proposed to remove the haze-induced video quality degradation.
Hazy image improving methods are classified into a model-based method using an atmospheric physical model and a nonmodel-based method without using an atmospheric physical model.
Unlike the model-based method, the nonmodel-based method does not estimate an atmospheric parameter and may be simply implemented. However, the nonmodel-based method has a problem of distorting a color fidelity and a haze removing effect. Therefore, recently, it is common to improve a hazy image by using the model-based method using a piece of image.
On the other hand, since the model-based method uses an atmospheric physical model, the model-based method may effectively improve a color tone and a contrast degraded by scattered light. However, the model-based method has difficulty in accurately estimating a parameter and has a drawback of taking a long operation time.